


The Ugly Duckling's Mother

by Dr_Fell



Category: Den grimme Ælling | The Ugly Duckling - Hans Christian Andersen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:24:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5511911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fell/pseuds/Dr_Fell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ugly duckling's step mother has her say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ugly Duckling's Mother

It was difficult. It wasn't that he didn't look like the other brothers and sisters. It was something more... more fundamental than that. 

* * *

I couldn't help thinking there was something wrong at the start. He was always asking for more food. Pushing the others out of the way to get more food. He was bigger, right from the start, and wanted more to eat. I tried to share it out equally, give the others a bit more to help them grow as well as he did, but he never listened to me. 

It was always about how he was 'hungry, mum, hungry', and when I said 'the others are hungry too', it would be 'not as hungry as me, I'm hungry, mum'.

And of course he was hungry. And I feel guilty about that now. Of course he was hungry. He needed more than I could give him. He was a swan, for God's sake. I'm a duck. He needed what two big swans could bring in for food, not one duck with four other children and a father who's spending most of his time tipped upside down dabbling in the duckweed.

So I didn't feed him as well as he needed, and I didn't know what he needed, and I do blame myself. But I had four other ducklings to look after. 

I've said all that before, haven't I? I just repeated myself. That's how it goes. I spend the whole time repeating myself. Needed more food. Was a swan not a duck. I didn't know. I gave him the share of the food I had available.

And now I see him and he looks great, he really does. But he's four times the size of me. His wings... his wings are huge, for God's sake. His neck... his neck is about as long as my whole body. And I look at him and I think, 'I tried to feed that?' 

And I admit it, sometimes I get pissed off, for the other ducklings. Because I tried to make it fair, but would they have grown better if I'd had more to go round? Because as it was, it wasn't just an extra mouth trailing behind me, but an extra mouth trying to eat four times as much as any of the rest.

And what about his parents? That's what I really want to know. Sure, I didn't do a great job at bringing up a swan, being a duck and all, with other demands on my time. But what happened to the parents who were, you know, actually swans? The swans who might have had some level of parental responsibility for their offspring's physical and mental well-being. 

Rather than leaving the egg in my nest and just, well, swanning off.


End file.
